This is probably why you don’t post about politics. Although you should. But regardless, here we go:

Two quotes from the articles that you circled:

“Ahmadinejad, wearing a dark suit and an open-necked shirt, took aim at unbridled capitalism for bringing about the conditions that have led to the world economic crisis.”

&

“King: Are you saying capitalism is a failure?

Moore: Yes. Capitalism. Yes. Well, I don’t have to say it. Capitalism, in the last year, has proven that it’s failed. All the basic tenets of what we’ve talked about the free market, about free enterprise and competition just completely fell apart. As soon as they lost, essentially, our money, they came running to the federal government for a bailout — for welfare, for socialism. And I thought the basic principle of capitalism was that it’s a sink-or-swim situation. And those who do well, the cream rises to the top and, you know, those who invest their money wrongly or, you know, don’t run their business the right way, then they don’t do well.

And if you run your business the wrong way, where does it say that you or I or anybody watching this has to bail them out?

I understand why everybody seemed to get behind it, because a lot of people were afraid, because these people down on Wall Street had taken our money and made bets with it. I mean, they essentially created this invisible virtual casino with people’s money — people’s pension funds, people’s 401(k)s. They took this money and they made bets. And then they made bets on the bets. And then they took out insurance policies on the bets. And then they took out insurance against the insurance — the credit default swaps.”

While not an Ahmadinejad fan and not a very big Michael Moore fan, I think they make good points.

I think what we’ve seen is more a failure of the government trying to regulate capitalism more than a failure of capitalism itself. Freddie and Fannie are a big portion of what got us into this mess. And bailing out industries short-circuits the corrections in the markets.

Of course, allowing peoples’ retirement savings to be wiped out is not politically popular. Hard to get re-elected on that platform. But is that a failure of capitalism, or a failure of our government to allow capitalism to work?

I’ve never seen pure capitalism in my lifetime. And I doubt I will. I don’t think government interference will end any time soon.